The future of intelligent automation: making businesses more agile

WE are entering a new era of human-machine interface for repetitive and rote processes. More than ever, software tools are emerging as the "robots" for knowledge work and driving real impact. These enterprise robots may not resemble the automatons from your favourite sci-fi movie. However, a recent Cognizant study shows that when applied to automating core business processes, they can extend the productivity and problem-solving capabilities of human beings and improve business results.

Cognizant's research finds that humans are working smarter with sophisticated software to automate business tasks, generating rich process data that can drive meaningful insights, value and outcomes for businesses. While these are early days, it is increasingly clear that robots do not dominate the process automation space, but rather work in tandem to help make smart humans smarter and businesses more agile.

Intelligent automation is about improving what people can do. The meaning contained in process data yielded by automation can be unlocked using process analytics. Some organisations are automating work through digitisation. They are re-imagining and instrumenting processes from their inception so as to fully harness the power of emerging technologies, such as social, mobile, analytics, cloud, and more recently the Internet of Things (IoT), where sensors are beginning to digitise and automate processes in a straight-through data flow.